Arctic

Commerce, Governance and Policy

Uttam Kumar Sinha, Jo Inge Bekkevold

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781317517504
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

In May 2013, China, India, Japan, Singapore and South Korea (Asia 5) were given status as permanent observers in the Arctic Council. It was a symbolic and significant moment in the history of Arctic affairs. The list of stakeholders in the Arctic has now expanded to include both the Arctic littoral states and the five Asian states. The drivers and policies of these stakeholders on the Arctic vary, but research on climate change, possible changes to the global energy and minerals markets, adherence to international norms like the UNCLOS, and geopolitical considerations are issues of concern.

This volume is based on the reviewed, revised and updated versions of papers presented at the roundtable on The Geopolitics of the Arctic: Commerce, Governance and Policy hosted by the Institute for Defense Studies and Analyses (IDSA) in New Delhi in September, 2013, in joint co-operation with the Fridtjof Nansen Institute (FNI), the Norwegian Institute for Defence Studies (IFS) and Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO).We hope that this book, with some compelling perspectives on a number of challenging issues, will help engage the policy community to identify and explore opportunities for international cooperation in the Arctic.

This book was originally published as a special issue of Strategic Analysis.

Asian Stakes and Arctic Governance

Olav Schram Stokke

Abstract: Building on stakeholder management theory, this article examines the salience of Asian stakes in three key areas of Arctic governance: management and use of natural resources; shipping; and environmental protection. The Asian states that are now permanent observers in the Arctic Council have significant stakes in Arctic governance, but their salience varies considerably across these issue areas. Viewing stakeholder patterns in relation to the differentiated roles that the Arctic Council plays in Arctic governance makes it possible to derive some policy implications regarding the depth of Asian state involvement in that body.

Introduction

What stakes do Asian states have in the Arctic? How will their rising involvement affect Arctic governance? China, India and other leading Asian states have been paying increasing attention to Arctic affairs. The process that led up to their achieving permanent observer status in the Arctic Council in 2013 exposed worries among some regional actors over sovereignty issues, the visibility of indigenous concerns, and Arctic environmental protection.¹ Examining Asian involvement in international regimes relevant to the Arctic links up to the larger question of what conditions can induce those operating an institution to accommodate outside demands for participation and influence. Stakeholder theory aims to shed light on this issue, but, as this article shows, due to the multiplicity of institutions relevant to Arctic governance, specifying the conditions that drive accommodation requires attention to the role that each institution plays within the broader institutional complex.

Specifically, I argue that Asian states have significant stakes in Arctic governance, but that their stakeholder salience varies considerably from one issue area to another. An institution’s ‘stakeholders’ are those actors who are affected by the institution or are capable of influencing its performance; ‘salience’ refers to the actual attention and priority accorded them.² One reason for the variation in stakeholder salience in Arctic governance is that international law allocates decision-making competence differently across issue areas. Coastal states are largely in charge of resource management decisions in waters that fall under their jurisdiction; they can therefore afford to pay scant attention to other players—be they states or non-state actors such as long-distance fishing operators or foreign oil companies—who might have stakes in those decisions. By contrast, in issue areas where coastal state jurisdiction is more limited, such as shipping and environmental protection, failure to take seriously the concerns of other stakeholders may prove costly, because achieving goals such as maritime safety or mitigating discharges of pollution usually requires the involvement of actors outside the region. Regulatory competence over activities that impinge on institutional performance is, therefore, an important factor that drives stakeholder saliency, but, as this article shows, other drivers are also worthy of attention.

Debates over stakeholder salience in Arctic governance over the past 10 years have focused on the Arctic Council, an international soft-law institution established in 1996 for dealing with issues of environmental protection and sustainable development. Its membership comprises the eight states with territory within the Arctic Circle: Canada, Denmark (Greenland), Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, Sweden and the USA. In addition, several transnational associations of Arctic indigenous peoples have status as permanent participants. This entails ‘active participation and full consultation’, but actual decisions are taken by the member states.³ Numerous non-Arctic states, international organisations and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) participate as observers. Biennial ministerial meetings adopt declarations that direct Council activities, with implementation overseen by the members’ Senior Arctic Officials. Working groups in areas such as environmental monitoring, biodiversity protection and sustainable development oversee the preparation of environmental assessment reports and other studies, sometimes generating non-binding recommendations on such matters as environmental toxics, climate change, oil and gas activities and shipping. A Permanent Secretariat has been operational since 2013. The Arctic Council deals with knowledge-building and capacity enhancement and is gradually becoming a policy-shaping institution. It does not engage in direct policy-making, however, since its decisions are only guidelines and are not legally binding.

Demands by Asian states for a more prominent position in the Arctic Council, including that observers must be allowed to participate more actively in deliberations, would arguably carry greater weight if these states had availed themselves more of the decision-making access they already possess in other broader international institutions that co-govern the Arctic. The leading Asian states have largely refrained from raising Arctic concerns or promoting a specific Arctic agenda within various international institutions crucial to Arctic governance, like the International Maritime Organization (IMO) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), where they hold influential positions. The converse point is also relevant, however: involving leading Asian states more deeply in the work of the Arctic Council is the most promising way to heighten their knowledge about, and commitment to, the Arctic dimensions of global challenges. Such knowledge and awareness, in turn, are likely to make these states more sensitive to Arctic problems when participating in decision-making within broader international institutions which, unlike the Arctic Council, are endowed with binding regulatory powers.

I begin by elaborating on the concept of ‘stakeholder salience’ and factors likely to influence it. Then I examine the salience of Asian stakes in three key areas of Arctic governance: management and use of natural resources; shipping; and environmental protection. Although governments are the foremost actors in Arctic governance, non-state actors such as scientific advisory bodies, transnational corporations, environmental groups or indigenous peoples’ organisations also participate in the creation and operation of relevant institutions.⁴ Finally, by relating these patterns of stakeholder salience to the distinctive roles of the Arctic Council in various issue areas of Arctic governance, I derive some policy implications regarding the depth of Asian state involvement in that institution.

Arctic stakeholders

Stakeholder salience has emerged on the Arctic policy agenda because a wide range of actors who previously paid scant attention to this region are now jockeying for position to influence political decisions or to acquire a share in regional industrial activities. The broad concept of stakeholders applied here—actors who are either significantly affected by an institution or capable of affecting it—derives from strategic management analysis, which holds that stakeholder status extends beyond those with the legal competence or recognised right to participate in institutional decision-making.⁵ Contributors to stakeholder theory have focused on private corporations, but the basic problem they address is equally relevant for international bodies:⁶ what factors should those operating an institution take into consideration in managing stakeholder relations, that is, when setting priorities among the stakes that different actors claim to have in its decisions?

Those who advocate a restrictive approach to stakeholder management typically emphasise the first part of the stakeholder definition—the ability to affect—arguing that priority should be given to those stakeholders who are crucial to institutional performance and survival. A more inclusive approach is often taken by those who place equal emphasis on the second part—affectedness—advocating attention to a range of stakeholders and seeking ways to reconcile possible conflicting demands. My approach to this question is instrumental, with the focus on how exclusiveness or inclusiveness is likely to affect institutional performance.⁷ Thus, differences among stakeholders as to their ability to provide resources for, or to impede, the realisation of institutional objectives loom large in this article. That said, Arctic governance involves a large number of international institutions that specialise in different issue areas or governance tasks, so any assessment of an institution’s performance must take into account its role within a larger institutional complex.⁸ In the case of the Arctic Council, that role arguably implies a more inclusive stakeholder approach than that pursued to date.

Mitchell and associates usefully identify an organisation’s stakeholders by reference to three attributes—power, legitimacy and urgency.⁹ Power refers to the ability to impose one’s will in a relationship, including by controlling outcomes of interest to the institution. Legitimacy concerns the perceived or assumed appropriateness of the claim an actor makes for institutional attention, whereas urgency is about the insistence on such attention. These authors hold that the actual attention and priority accorded to such claims—stakeholder salience—can be derived from the accumulation of those three attributes. Thus, actors who combine power, legitimacy and urgency are ‘definite’ stakeholders, and can be expected to receive substantially more attention from those operating an institution than will stakeholders possessing only one or two of those attributes—‘latent’ and ‘expectant’ stakeholders, respectively.¹⁰

In these terms, the five Arctic coastal states (Canada, Denmark/Greenland, Norway, Russia and the USA) are clearly definite stakeholders in any area of Arctic governance, and whatever international institution is in focus. As will be elaborated below, coastal state power and legitimacy in any governance process pertaining to the Arctic derives from the state’s recognised sovereignty over land, internal waters and the territorial sea, and from its sovereign rights to natural resources in its exclusive economic zones (EEZ) and continental shelves. Urgency is also high, as evident in the 2008 Ilulissat Declaration, issued partly in response to calls for a new international treaty for protection of the Arctic environment, in view of the growing interest in utilising regional resources or sea lanes:¹¹ ‘By virtue of their sovereignty, sovereign rights and jurisdiction in large areas of the Arctic Ocean’, the framers of the Declaration insisted, ‘the five coastal states are in a unique position to address these possibilities and challenges [and] … have a stewardship role in protecting’ Arctic ecosystems.¹² This combination of power, legitimacy and urgency would lead Mitchell and associates to predict that any international institution aspiring to influence the management of Arctic fish resources, for instance, or to strengthen environmental standards for Arctic petroleum activities, will pay very close attention to coastal state concerns, in its procedures for decision-making as well as in the content of its standards.

The three Arctic Council members not littoral to the Arctic Ocean as such—Finland, Iceland and Sweden—are also definite stakeholders in issues decided upon in the Council, but, as noted, that scope is rather narrow. In central Arctic issue areas like natural resource management, shipping or protection of the marine environment, neither the power nor the legitimacy of the three non-coastal state members of the Council is significantly higher than that of other actors interested in Arctic affairs, such as the European Union or the Asian states in focus here. As will be shown in the following, the salience of stakeholders other than the five coastal states in Arctic international governance institutions tends to be either ‘latent’ or ‘expectant’, depending on the urgency of their claims and the issue-specific power and legitimacy they hold in other institutions in the Arctic governance complex.

Arctic resources

The Arctic region is rich in natural resources such as petroleum, strategic minerals and fish, and the steep gro...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Citation Information
• Introduction
• 1. Asian Stakes and Arctic Governance
• 2. The Northern Sea Route: Smooth Sailing Ahead?
• 3. The Polar Code and Arctic Navigation
• 4. Arctic: The Next Great Game in Energy Geopolitics?
• 5. Norway’s High North Policy and New Asian Stakeholders
• 6. Russia’s China Policy in the Arctic
• 7. Russia’s Strategic Concerns in the Arctic and Its Impact on Japan-Russia Relations
• 8. The Arctic and India: Strategic Awareness and Scientific Engagement
• 9. The Maritime Tiger: Exploring South Korea’s Interests and Role in the Arctic
• 10. The Legal Regime of the Arctic and India’s Role and Options
• 11. China’s Role in Arctic Affairs in the Context of Global Governance
• 12. Overview of Korea’s Arctic Policy Development
• Index